


Gone

by KirstenGoodkin



Category: Stitchers (TV)
Genre: F/M, Kirstens bday strategically planted in, Post-Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-19
Packaged: 2019-02-27 16:02:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13251672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KirstenGoodkin/pseuds/KirstenGoodkin
Summary: Cameron's spent days wallowing in heartbreak over Kirsten's memory loss, but maybe a phone call from her can give him the hope he thought he'd lost.





	1. Gone

**Author's Note:**

> Hi yall! You may already know me or this fic from Wattpad (@Kirsten613) or Tumblr (@cameron-goodkins-wife). This is one of my best fanfics and I hope you guys enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!!

It's the first thing that hits him when he wakes up.

She's gone.

Gone.

She doesn't know who he is anymore. She doesn't know what they had. She's back in her own house, with Camille, waiting for the past few years to come back to her when they may not ever return. 

His blurry vision clears as he blinks the sleep away, and the first thing he notices is something shiny catching sunlight on the pillow next to him. He realizes that it's strands of her hair from a few nights ago, and that crushes him into the wall of sadness even more.

After that, his ears identify the loud buzzing that is coming from his bedside table. He flings his arm out and grabs his phone, just missing the call. The phone starts ringing again, but before it does, he gets a glance of the home screen.

3 Missed Calls From: Stretch

Dammit, he forgot to change that. The thought only lasts a moment before the questions flood him; why is she calling, is something wrong, the list goes on. He answers the call that's currently coming in.

"Kirsten?" His tired voice croaks, killing him slowly has her name slides from his mouth. 

"Morning, Cameron. How'd you sleep?" 

It feels wrong. It all feels wrong. She never asked how he slept. Ever. It was like an unwritten rule that they both slept pretty well when they were with each other, so it was never a topic of conversation.

"Um, fine. Why are you calling?" 

He doesn't want to get up. He doesn't want to continue this conversation and be continuously reminded of everything he lost. He wants to curl into a ball and go into hibernation for as long as it takes for the pain to heal. 

"Camille said that you and I were really good friends so I thought I'd call and ask if you wanted to get coffee. I'm trying to get back to normal, you know, since clearly a lot has changed in my life in the past couple years. Camille and I also agreed that maybe it would be good for me to do something that was normal for me. It could even help my memory." 

He doesn't want to. Well, he does, he wants her more than anything, but getting together with her sounds painful. Excruciating, even. But if he rejected, then she would know something was up, and maybe even be hurt by it (which she probably wouldn't, she doesn't even remember him, but the thought of hurting her might hurt worse than the pain of not having her. If anything, it makes the pain intensify). 

"Um, I mean, I guess I could. Where do you wanna go?" 

"This place called the Tea & Bean is really good. Do you know where that is?"

Of course he knows where that is. It's where him and her would go and get coffee all the time, to bring back to either of their places, the lab, or get lunch on a day off. For a piercing moment, he thinks, 'I wonder if she remembers that'. Then it hits him like a ton of bricks. She doesn't. 

"Cameron?" 

He blanked. He didn't realize.

"Sorry, yeah. I know where that is. What time?"

"7:30? Is a half hour enough for you?"

"Yeah. Do you, uh, want me to pick you up?" He thinks maybe just a second of normalcy, seeing her beautiful face coming out of her house and smiling at him, filling him with warmth and pride, would be nice.

Until she gets in the car and he realizes he can't kiss her. He can't rest his hand on her leg as they drive, he can't make silly flirtatious comments that make her giggle. It isn't normal anymore.

"Would you normally pick me up?" Her smirk is almost heard through the phone, and for the first time in what feels like years, he smiles, just the littlest bit, and when he realizes he's doing it he stops. It was just such a Kirsten thing to say. 

"Yeah." 

It's all he can say. He wants to add, I drive you around a lot, or, we always drive together, but something stops him. If he made a comment like that, it would be light-hearted, and almost normal. But his brain keeps telling him to stop, because nothing is normal, and he can't do things like that anymore.

"Cool. See you soon?" 

"Yeah. See you soon." He quickly presses his thumb against the red circle on his screen that ends the call. He's about to haul himself out of bed, and mentally prepare himself for what he's about to do, when a few numbers on his phone screen catch his eye. 

It says he was on the phone with her for 6 minutes and 13 seconds, and that it is 6:56 AM. To any other person, this would mean nothing. 

But for him, it raises flags, flashes lights, waves signs, and hits him upside the head. Every morning, at 6:50 AM, Kirsten would call him. It started back when she had Temporal Dysplasia, when everything had a fixed time and schedule for her, and when she lost it the routine kind of stuck. 

If they were on the phone for around 6 minutes and it's 6:56 now, that means she called him at 6:50. Like she always did. 

He slaps himself for being so hopeful. It was probably just coincidental.

But then again, it may not be.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cameron and Kirsten follow through with their day's plans. Will Cameron get the closure he needs? Or will he break down?

The thought really hits him when he pulls into her driveway. 

'I don't want to do this.'

Maybe some would say he's crazy for not wanting it. The girl you love calls you up and asks to spend time with you at your guys' favorite coffee place. Nothing wrong with that, right?

No, not at all, but that situation lacks one major detail that separates that from Cameron's current situation: The girl you love not really knowing who you are. 

This detail is cause for pain. Pain and misery and not wanting to get out of bed. But when she calls, no matter the situation, he answers. The day he doesn't answer a call from her, something will be terribly wrong. 

Even more wrong than what's about to happen, he thinks. And what's about to happen feels all too wrong. 

He hears her front door creak open, then slam shut. The knot in his stomach tightens, and his hands run cold, shaking weakly.

She comes around the corner, in all of her glory, and he thinks that he might throw up. He might, if he had eaten in the past couple days. But the breakfast bar he barely choked down for breakfast already came up right before he was out the door that morning, so if he threw up now it would be more of a dry heave. Even dry heaving wouldn't be as painful as seeing her right now is.

She's wearing a black tank top with the army green jacket that she wore the same day they got infected with the mutated Spanish Flu. His mind wanders to the hug she gave him that day, and he's hit with regret. 

He should have held her tighter. 

He should have savored that moment, kept her in his arms just for a little while longer, muscular arms wrapped around her thin torso like it could cure him. But instead, he barely comprehended the moment and she was sprinting out of his arms and into the lab as quickly as she threw herself into them. 

"Cameron?" Her hand waving in front of his face startles him. She's already in the car, buckled in, looking at him with concern. Bile rises in his throat. "You OK?" 

He clears his throat.

"Yeah. I'm— I'm fine."

She doesn't look convinced. He's close to physically gagging now, because that was the look she'd give him all of the time, because he's the worst liar ever. He doesn't think he's ever told a bigger lie than the one he told just then. He's never said anything more wrong than that "I'm fine". 

He realizes he is staring at her. Now she looks weirded out, but there's a boatload of emotion and stress and worry in her eyes and he doesn't know where it's coming from. 

In a chick flick, he would grab her face and kiss her, kiss her like he was dying and she was life and he wanted life so, terribly bad. No matter the consequences, he would kiss her, and maybe her rejection would cause more emotional damage than what's already been done but lately he's been an expert at living in the moment and acting on instinct.

He doesn't kiss her. He doesn't because he knows it would end badly, badly like an explosive car wreck and he doesn't know how much more of a beating his heart can take before it chooses to give in to the darkness. 

"Cameron," she says, and places her hand over one of his clammy, quivering ones in his lap. He tugs his hand back with cat like reflexes, and she looks hurt. He can't stand it.

He throws open his car door and gets out. Apparently, his legs are shot too, because his knees almost buckle and he almost completely collapses. Another car door slamming signifies that she is out of the car too, while he leans on the car doors and tries to balance.

"Cameron, oh my God, are you OK?" She reaches out to grab his arms and help him stand upright, but he won't let her.

"Don't touch me."

"Cameron—"

"Don't. Touch. Me."

She pulls back, shocked. But he just can't have her touch him. It makes it all real, and harsh, and awakening. He hates that he's being this cruel, it's just coming out. He's taking his misery out on her. 

"I'm sorry," he offers. "I'm sorry." Now the tears are coming, and the last thing he wants to be doing is crying in front of her, so he presses his palms against his eyes and wills the tears away. He removes his hands when he feels comfortable that the tears can be contained. "I'm OK. I'm sorry. I just haven't been in the best shape lately."

She knows he's talking bull, but she lets it go because she knows what's wrong. Her mind wrestles with the thoughts of telling him the truth and risking the consequences, or watching him slowly letting himself deteriorate. She isn't sure she could choose the second option and avoid ruining herself at the same time. 

"Do you... Do you still wanna go out? Or would you rather do it another day?" He notices her tiptoeing around her words. His guilt for the way he behaved just moments before is enough to kill him, so he immediately answers.

"No! No, I still want to go out."

"Really?"

"Yeah. It'll... It'll be nice." 

Maybe that was a lie. Maybe it won't be nice, but maybe he'll be able to forget their situation for a second, and that could be enough to make his day. 

The duo gets back into his car, and thus begins the silent car ride to the Tea & Bean. Soon enough, they're there, and the place is mildly busy, baristas buzzing around behind the counter.

"Large green tea with sweetener and tall black coffee with no cream or sugar, please," he orders. It only takes him a second to realize that he ordered for her, and when his gaze flickers down to her face in the corner of his eye, there's a hint of red on her cheeks.

There it is. The small moment where he forgets about the pain.

In a flash it was over. But it felt good, great, even.

Who is he kidding, it felt fantastic.

They get their drinks from the kind barista and decide to walk around, the golden sun taking away some of the chill of the autumn breeze. 

Everything that they were doing felt... Almost normal. After his body and brain recovered from the fact that she was there with him, he slowly got more comfortable with the situation. But there were moments when she would bring something up and it would occur to him that they had had that same discussion before, whether it had been last week or months before, and it would slap him in the face. As they walk through a vacant park that they discovered with their mindless strolling, he does his best not to just stare at her.

"Thank you," Cameron says. "Thank you for calling me this morning. I'm glad we did this. I'm sorry I acted like such an ass earlier, I just haven't been feeling well lately, and having you around... It's weird, the thought of you not really knowing who I am." 

She looks at him, but he keeps his gaze locked on the grass. 

"We were that close, huh?" 

He coughs.

"You have no idea."

They walk a little more, in silence, the conversation suddenly taking a deeper turn, and he doesn't know where this path leads them. He feels her soft, cold fingers lightly wrap around his, and his heart leaps into his throat.

"Cameron?"

"Yeah?"

"It was worth it."

He's actually going to throw up. He doesn't know what is going on. He might even pass out. 

But she squeezes his hand, and he can tell that there's a million things she wants to say but can't, and that he can't freak out. Something is wrong, she's doing this for him, and he wants to protect her from whatever is threatening her. 

But maybe something is threatening him, and she decided it's her turn to protect him. 

So, he doesn't lose his mind. Surprisingly, he doesn't pass out or throw up, and instead squeezes her hand back and nods.

"I know."

**Author's Note:**

> I am planning on publishing a part two, so check back soon!!


End file.
